Mr Smarty Pants Really Is Smart

My baby started college this semester. Yeah I can hardly believe it. He's living at home commuting to the local college. I'm fine with this as he's very independent and it's almost like we each have our own "half" of the house. He lives upstairs and I live downstairs. He's just completed his first round of tests. He took these much more seriously than I expected. I think he was even nervous. I'm happy to report that he made an A in math, an A in English, the second highest grade in the class in sociolgy and the 18th highest grade (with over 100 kids in the class) in geology. The sociology teacher told them he would curve the grades and the geology teach as well. I'm very proud of him - Mr. Smarty Pants.

So, why do teachers do this? Why do they give impossible exams? Why do they post scores for the test in the order of best to worst? I had a math professor in college who used to do this. He would hand out the tests in the order you scored. So if you got your test first, you had the highest grade and if you got yours last, you had the worst grade. Now while that motivated the anal retentive, type A, competitive personalities like me (I always wanted to be first!), it certainly did nothing but embarrass the lower scorers. I always tried to distract myself after he got about halfway through handing out the tests (of course I had already received mine) because I didn't want to embarrass anyone.

Well back to Mr. Smarty Pants....We went to the Galleria on Saturday to celebrate his grades. A man close to his mom's heart...we went shopping! He didn't find what he was looking for, but Mom bought several pieces of costume jewelry from my favorite accessory place, Charming Charlie. Oh don't feel sorry for Mr. Smarty Pants - he got home and ordered what he wanted online. Oh the modern methods of shopping!